Terrorism by Any Other Name

Terrorism By Any Other Name

First Paper

        During the course of the twentieth-century, renewed attention was directed to the conduct of war and to the use of terrorism as a means of accomplishing political goals. While terrorism and war which involved civilians had occurred at previous points in human history, such as during the Thirty Years' War and during other points in history, these two phenomena became alarmingly common during the last part of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century (Diamond, 1998). The wars in which civilians were treated as combatants ranged from small, intermittent conflicts such as the wars with the Plains Indians to international wars such as World War II. These wars and the terrorist movements, which mirrored them in type if not in scale, occurred in such diverse locations as Africa (the wars in the Congo in the 1990s and 2000s), East Asia (the Vietnam War, the bombing campaign over Japan during WW2), Europe (World War 2), North America (the recent civil war with Narco-traffickers in Mexico), South America (the  insurgency in Colombia) and in almost every other part of the world (Valentino,2004). However, for the purposes of this paper, only three instances of conflict will be taken as examples: World War II; the attacks launched by Al-Qaida, ISIS, and similar groups against political, military, and civilian targets; and the “Forest Brothers” of the postwar USSR.

Attacks Against Civilians During War

        During war, civilians are often an extremely inviting target because of the fact that a nation's populations is integral to supporting its war effort, because of the disorganizing effects that indiscriminate attacks can have upon an enemy's defenses, and because civilians are relatively unable to fight back. In some cases, these attacks have been justified by claiming that civilians are, either directly or indirectly, part of the opposing country's war effort. It is often claimed that civilians are a direct part of the opposing country's war effort because they perform war-related work such as manufacturing military equipment or maintaining civil defense infrastructure that helps to protect military equipment and industrial infrastructure. It is claimed that they indirectly support a nation's war effort by paying taxes, helping to maintain the economy of the country, and supporting the enemy government in various other ways. Further, attacks against civilians have been justified in some cases by arguing that the evil which is being attacked is so profoundly horrible as to legitimize any means that are used to stop it (Wheeler, 2002).

        However, while this is true, it is also true that there are rules which must be upheld. The most basic, elemental reason for this is that, without certain restraints upon warfare, there is nothing which can preserve human civilization. The civilizations which populate the earth, and their technical, scientific, artistic, and cultural achievements, have taken countless centuries of sustained effort to build (Diamond, 1998). It would be the height of folly, or even depravity, to allow these gains to be wiped out, or even damaged, as part of an effort to promote limited, political goals. Apart from human rights such as the right of each person not to be killed without a just reason, the political goals for which wars are launched, from the most important and defensible (such as the physical survival of a group of people) to the least important and defensible (such as wars launched to avenge an insult or simply to gain territory), can only have value if the civilizations, defined broadly, from which the respective combatants derive their strength continue to survive. As President Kennedy said, “[…] there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.” The same thing goes for our artistic, cultural, intellectual, economic, scientific, and technical “heritage,” all of which are placed in extremely severe peril if war is waged upon civilians (Kennedy, 1961). To destroy these things for a small and limited goal (i.e., anything short of the continued survival of a significant part of the human race) is an excellent example of what Garvey (2003) calls “wicked wrongs” - they are wicked because they grow from pride. In this case, the pride in question is the false belief that the social, economic, and cultural infrastructure which sustains us as a species is fungible and disposable.

Attacks Upon Civilians During World War II

        The years between 1939 and 1945 saw some of the most outrageous, obscene horrors which have ever been committed against civilians, combatants, and prisoners. In countries where combat took place, mass devastation was the rule rather than the exception. Japan, much of China and the USSR, Germany, most of Eastern Europe, and parts of Italy were almost totally destroyed and attacks upon civilians were commonplace (Hastings, 2012). Two of the most egregious example of attacks upon civilians were German “anti-partisan” campaigns on the Eastern front and American air attacks against Japanese cities.

        German anti-partisan units. Shortly after the German occupation of Poland, efforts began to kill or imprison all members of groups that were deemed to be threatening to the German occupation or able to form a nucleus of resistance, such as intellectuals, political figures, Jews, some Polish soldiers, and other groups. These efforts intensified with the German invasion of the USSR In 1941. During Operation Barbarossa, large Russian corps and even entire armies were surrounded and systematically destroyed by smaller units. During the course of these operations, many Russian soldiers escaped and formed the nucleus of partisan groups that would prove to be a thorn in the side of the Axis powers until they were finally pushed back into Poland in 1944. In order to fight these partisans, the Germans launched anti-partisan efforts by police and SS units which would involved cordoning off large areas and killing as many partisans as possible. Because of the large areas involved, these efforts often involved killing anyone who appeared to have any involvement with partisans and retaliatory attacks against civilians in the wake of partisan attacks. Over the course of the war, German anti-partisan activities killed an unknown, but huge number of people, to say nothing of the people killed by einsatzgruppen (roving death squads that targeted Jews and other people) and the death camps (Fritz, 2015).

        The air war against Japan. Simultaneously, in the Pacific, the attack against the US fleet based at Pearl Harbor launched the official involvement of the United States in World War 2. Because of the unprovoked nature of the attack against Pearl Harbor and other locations and the horrible treatment of prisoners of war in the wake of Japanese attacks on the Allies, there was a widespread tolerance among the public for attacks that had little purpose other than revenge. Later on in the war, once islands closer to the Japanese home islands such as the Marianas were taken, large, regular bombing raids began to be launched against Japanese cities. In one of these raids, which occurred on March 9, 1945, nearly 100,000 people were killed, the vast majority of whom were civilians. Over the course of the war, the bombing attacks against Tokyo alone killed more than 200,000 people. In addition, similar raids were launched against many other Japanese cities, and atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, events which killed at least 130,000 people. Needless to say, both of these events were acts of terrorism – the air bombing of Japan was intended to sow chaos and dissuade the Japanese government from continuing the war, and the German attacks on civilians were designed to discourage partisan attacks, remove their base of support, and make the price for continuing such attacks unjustifiably high (Pape, 1996; Sledge, 2007).

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